Cuckoo Marans

Elegant birds with beautiful type, bred in the French style.

Laying dark reddish-brown eggs with a pleasing shine.

This is the bloodline responsible for the eggs awarded at the Royal Canberra Poultry Show in June 2024. They garnered a first place alongside our Cream Legbar and olive eggs in the “Mixed egg class”, and placed second for the “3 large brown eggs” class.

Chicks are sexable early, as the feathers come in — females darker and speckled, males lighter and striped.

Please note: This line does throw occasional non-standard chicks. They hatch yellow but rest assured it is not recessive white and not the result of your chicks being crossbred — the line has been kept pure as long as I’ve had them and before as far as I know. But, Marans contain multitudes — especially in Australia.

What does it mean? It depends what your goals are. The birds feather out patterned in a way that some regard as a wheaten-based silver cuckoo. Others have postulated there’s a Columbian element. We don’t breed these birds forward, but some of our clients actually want these chicks because they can be used to create other rare Marans varieties like silver wheaten or salmon wheaten.

This is what the non-standard females may grow up to look like, two identical birds that occurred in our own hatching, seen here with their cuckoo sisters. Pretty, huh? But not to standard.

You may get one or two chicks like this from your dozen eggs — or you may get none. If this bothers you, please don’t order the cuckoos.

If the eggs are your priority, these chicks have the same potential as their siblings to lay gorgeous dark red-brown eggs.